Stagecoach

Before Stagecoach, Westerns were kid stuff, B-movies and serials that had simple plots and no complexity. But John Ford changed all that. Stagecoach, released in 1939, was something of a template for Westerns to come (many of them directed by Ford) which turned the Old West into a place of American myth, a metaphor the great experiment of democracy. The Western, like jazz or the musical comedy, is uniquely American. It also, not incidentally, was the first starring role for John Wayne, arguably the most American of all movie stars.

Stagecoach was based on a short story by Ernest Haycox, with a screenplay by Dudley Nichols. The plot is a basic structure that has been seen many times in many locations, such as Grand Hotel and Ship of Fools: a group of disparate people thrown together in one place. This one place happens to be the stagecoach across Arizona and to Lordsburg, New Mexico in the year 1880. On board are a cross-section of the Old West: a lawman, a soiled dove, a gambler, a dipsomaniacal doctor, a bloviating banker, a young woman traveling to see her husband in the army, a mild-mannered whiskey salesman, and an outlaw.

At first at odds with each other, they have to come together as the territory they are crossing is active with Apaches, led by Geronimo. They also deal with the young woman having a baby. Stagecoach is a film about redemption, and also of people being misunderstood, and comes together for a fine ending.

Wayne is the Ringo Kid, who has busted out of the pen. He wants to get to Lordsburg to kill the man who killed his father and brother. Curly, (George Bancroft) the no-nonsense marshal, who believes that Ringo is a good man, but has to arrest him. Claire Trevor is Dallas, the prostitute who is forced out of town by the blue-nosed ladies, who are also giving the boot to Doc Boone (Thomas Mitchell), who is always drunk, but happily so. He's even more happy to make the acquaintance of Mr. Peacock (played by the appropriately-named Donald Meek), who has a satchel full of whiskey samples.

Also on board is John Carradine as a Southern gambler who acts the gentleman but is actually a scoundrel (he's probably based on Doc Holliday) and a banker (Benton Churchill) who has embezzled money and plans on getting to Lordsburg before the telegraph lines are fixed. Finally there's comic relief with Andy Devine as the driver, Buck.

Many familiar Western tropes are here, some of the first time. This was Ford's first time filming in Monument Valley, where he would make many more movies. We get the cavalry coming to save the day, and the classic shot of the stagecoach in long shot, with a pan left to reveal a bunch of Apache ready to attack (the film was not enlightened about Indians, but they wouldn't be until the 1960s). There's also a showdown in the street, a man holding the "dead man's hand" (aces and eights), and two spectacular stunts by Yakima Canutt, one of them so dangerous that Ford swore he would never do such a thing again (Canutt falls between the team of horses and the stagecoach rolls over him).

The cinematography is by Bert Glennon, and though in black and white, captures the beauty of the terrain. There is also Wayne's star-making intro, when he has just cocked his Winchester having fired it, the camera zooming in on him (it does go out of focus for about a quarter of a second, but this is forgiven). Another shot really captured my attention. Wayne is in the foreground, watching Trevor walk down a corridor shaded in darkness, with the light at the end, which made me think of the last shot of The Searchers.

The love story between Wayne and Trevor is sweet, and also a bit forward-thinking. He doesn't know she's a whore, so he's immediately smitten, and she likes him, too. The others, particularly the young woman (Louise Platt) disdain her. But Wayne doesn't care, and she proves herself valuable when Platt has the baby. So does Mitchell, who has to sober up to deliver the infant. Mitchell won the Oscar for the role (he had a great year--he was also O'Hara in Gone With the Wind). So this film has several characters who are not what they appear to be.

Stagecoach is one of the greatest of Westerns and one of the best American films, period. I've seen it several times and watched last night as if it were the first time. That's what a great movie can do.